Today's a hard parenting day. Both kiddos wake up earlier than usual so I don't get my quiet morning time. Baby boy starts yelling for food almost immediately (Lord help me when he's a teenager). Our morning playtime is full of cries and screams and hair-pulls and tantrums because he is destroying something of hers… Continue reading Grace Upon Grace

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This week a college friend came into town. He's this amazing baker and generously gave me some of his sourdough starter. He also spent two hours teaching a very novice bread maker (me) the exact steps to get a perfect loaf. And what we made was indeed a PERFECT loaf. My four-year-old has already slathered… Continue reading On Loaves of Sourdough and Writing

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I've written about reading challenges before, and how they are so great for kids but also for adults, too. The GoodReads app has a fun little thing where you can set a reading goal for yourself and then track your books as you read them. I set my goal at 50 for the year. That's… Continue reading Mid-Year Book Round Up

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This girl right here is a huge cheater pants. That’s right. When we play games, she knows how to manipulate everything so that she wins or comes out ahead every.single.time. As a big-time rule follower, this kind of freaks me out and also drives me crazy. But this game is different. In this fun game,… Continue reading Just a Short Thought

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Friends, I did a thing. I wrote a book (something I said I could never do, ever) and then I signed up to attend a writer's conference (something I said I was way too scared to do, ever). With the registration fee, you get one free agent pitch. That means you sit down with an… Continue reading So I Did a Thing…

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I'm squished between two carseats, not a super comfortable place to be, but here I am anyway. My mom and dad are in the front, we are headed to find adventure at IKEA, and my daughter has a book in her hands. It's called Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall. The main character is a… Continue reading 6 Ways to Help Your Kids Get Ready to Read

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Our girl missed the cutoff for kindergarten by a number of days, so we have one more year of preschool ahead of us, and let me tell you, preschool shopping is a painful process. So painful, in fact, that making a decision this week threw me into a full-on mom guilt attack. Mom guilt is a… Continue reading Just Say NO to the Mom Guilt (in 3 “Easy” Steps)

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So. Baby boy's first birthday was such a fun celebration, but it also marked four, yes FOUR, months in which I had not experienced even a six hour stretch of sleep at night. I first wrote about our sleep troubles here, and they seemed to just get worse and worse. He was such a happy… Continue reading How a Complete Stranger Saved My Life

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In the wake of yet another devastating school shooting, I've seen some interesting trends in people's responses and opinions. There are, of course, the more gun control camp in direct contrast to the more guns camp. (By the way, this post is not about gun control. I figure you have plenty of other places to go for… Continue reading You Are Enough. You Belong.